Cape Point: Venus Pool ...

Click to enlarge...

The gated, tarred road leading from Booi se Skerm to Venus Pool has become increasingly overgrown over the past few years. I like it that way. Fewer people wander down to the inappropriately named natural tidal pool on the rocks under Paulsberg. It's not that I mind families making full use of an ideal picnic spot and natural wonderland at the risk of perhaps a slip on a rock or a dousing by the sea. Venus Pool's easy access worries me because it forms the gateway to the The Coves, a treacherous walk along the coast and one of Cape Point's most compelling attractions. Despite my deeply ambivalent feelings for this stretch, I want it for myself ...

For now though...

...from Booi se Skerm the land climbs to the mountains along a rocky coast covered by marshland, pools, thick grasses and a few remaining thickets of the forest that once covered the area. It's a stunning coast, along which you can easily spend a day exploring nooks, crannies, weird rock formations, anemones, limpet shells, kelp forests, and any number of sealife forms. Towards Venus Pool and deeper beneath the immense shadow cast by Paulsberg's sheer and craggy face, The Cauldron, a small, block-shaped cutaway from the coast roils and thunders, throwing huge plumes of spray high above any onlooker wise enough to be aware of where the spray might fall.

The Cauldron is symptomatic of my frustration with this coast. It's position, rocks, and topography militate against easy point-and-click photography. I've very few pictures of the place and fewer that I like. The Cauldron's impossible to photograph in a manner that does justice to its raw violence. Facing seawards, it's all but invisible and a camera cannot capture the height of the waves flung to the gulls and terns wheeling and cawing overhead. Side on, getting close to it when the swell booms in is nigh on impossible but, if you do, catching the dark coast plays havoc with any light setting. The mountains too, i.e. Paulsberg, De Boer and Judas Peak usually have the sun above or to their right and throw sharp, unyielding contrasts.

I've considered dropping in at the visitor's centre at Buffelsfontein to suggest the place be painted a more camera-friendly colour, but so far I've desisted. And so it remains a challenge.

The tarred road — a ten-minute amble, ends in a parking area hammered by a storm in September 2008. The steps leading down to Venus Pool have broken away and nature's reclaimed her domain. Best during an incoming tide — when aquamarine swells smash the ledges and launch themselves landwards, the dark, constantly washed rock slabs are ideally situated for an experienced eye to assess the coast stretching to Judas Peak and Batsata Rock. They're also ideal for fishing and mark the start of a protected zone.

Any assessment of an extended walk is likely to underestimate its difficulty. Cliffs, coves, crags, boulder-strewn beaches and sheer drops meld and merge to an illusory conformity from Venus Pool to Judas Peak and, while a visit to the former's two neighbouring coves might be feasible, walking any further demands extreme caution and a guide.

We'll head down that way shortly but, for now, Venus Pool. Surely somebody can come up with a better or more descriptive name. "The Slabs"? "Surrender all hope ..."?

Love was surely never as unforgiving.

Places Beginning with "B" ...

Click to enlarge...

From Buffels Bay, we head north across a scrubby, rocky beach littered with dried kelp, a couple of large, featureless dunes, a cross commemorating Vasco Da Gama — the fat cat and sometime sailor who gave the Cape its name, and an abundance of unremarkable undergrowth.

Why my apparent distaste for this particular place? Its delights are documented well enough below, but the main reasons for my lack of enthusiasm are the peaks towering over False Bay. From the sea, they form a vertiginous barrier to any thought of landing but, from experience, I know the coastal strip running along their base as one of the most challenging, rewarding, and dangerous walks in the Cape of Good Hope Nature Reserve.

But we'll get there. For now, we leave Buffels Bay and the visitors centre at Busffelsfontein, head off to further braai spots at Bordjiesrif, some of the Cape's most amazing surf at Black Rocks, and investigate the lime kiln under Paulsberg at Booi se Skerm. With a detour to Kanonkop to take in the view.

And because we've not many photos to look at, we might as well glance back in time to the original lighthouse at Cape Point — in 1860. Looks kinda different, eh?

Dunes, rocks and sandy beaches in a picturesque setting combine to make Buffels Bay a popular recreational area. ... Reserve management policy demands that recreation which is not strictly compatible with conservation, but allows for an acceptable diversity of utilisation by visitors, should be focused on a small number of appropriate sites. This minimises the need for disturbance and development in the rest of the reserve. Thus we have parking areas, rolling lawns, a tidal swimming pool, braai places and ablution blocks at the bay. Although inevitably detracting from the natural qualities of the reserve, such facilities are essential to cater for a broad spectrum of demands from visitors. Carefully planned and controlled, the infrastructure need not necessarily introduce suburbia into the wilderness. Very busy over the summer holiday season, Buffels Bay is all but deserted for the rest of the year. This is a lovely spot, and it is easy to see why it is so popular with the picnickers and paddlers. Present day visitors are not the first to appreciate the area — it has a long history of human occupation and utilisation, from vegetable farming to whaling. Today's users are, hopefully, more sensitive than their predecessors. As recently as the 1960s a fishing encampment was installed amongst the dunes. The domestic refuse emanating from this informal settlement has been largely removed, but a variety of material still surfaces from time to time. Chop bones and sea shells reflect the preferred diet of these latter-day strandlopers, an abundance of beer bottles their liquid leanings.

A second relatively intensively developed area not far away is Bordjiesrif. Again, the swimming pool and picnic spots are very busy in the summer, particularly over Christmas and New Year. At other times, there is little but the gulls to disturb the tranquillity of the boulder beaches and beckoning beds of kelp.

Further along the False Bay coast, the road runs along the foot of the hills and limestone outcrops to Booi se Skerm. We are told that years ago this was a veritable woodland of coastal shrubs and trees. A few remain, including an important relict patch of kloof forest, but most were chopped down to provide fuel for the local limekiln. Recently restored, this sits with a certain robust dignity under the outcrops which supplied its raison d'etre. The small caves in the cliffs are known as Booi se Skerm, or 'Booi's Shelter'. This stretch of coast loses the sun quite early, being almost oppressively overshadowed by the mountains, but, whoever Booi was, he and previous occupants (who may date back thousands of years) f the caves chose a retreat which affords the finest views of False Bay and the mountains beyond and received the warming sun first thing in the morning.

Michael Fraser and Liz McMahon | Between Two Shores

I'd recommend this book for its content, but not for its writing. The author uses "utilise" twice in the first paragraph, inserts “hopefully”, describes the place as "lovely", and speaks of "beckoning beds of kelp".

Urk! Let's get to the picture show ...